“Were they alive today, I’m sure great thinkers like Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud and Simone de Beauvoir would all agree: Every burning question we have about American culture can be profoundly answered by watching the ‘Real Housewives,'” he wrote. “This is particularly true when it comes to understanding the subtle yet significant differences between New York City and Los Angeles lifestyles and mind-sets.”

A native New Yorker, Abdul-Jabbar, 69, has lived in Los Angeles for more than four decades after joining the Lakers in 1975.

“It may seem challenging to see any differences between the ‘Real Housewives’ who represent these two cities. The women are are all wealthy, squabble about who owes whom an apology, openly seek beauty rejuvenation treatments, drink a lot of wine and hungrily hunt for ways to alchemize their television fame into lucrative business opportunities from shoes to vodka to toaster ovens,” Abdul-Jabbar wrote. “Plus, they are all white, which is odd since only 33 percent of New York and 29.4 percent of L.A. is white.”

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While Abdul-Jabbar referenced the short-lived addition of the “half-Asian, half-Jewish” Julianne Wainstein to New York last season, he also noted the lack of diversity among the Housewives’ social circles: “Both cities have racial problems they’d rather not deal with, and the ‘Real Housewives’ also choose not to deal with it. It’s not a criticism, just an observation that among the wealthy elite in both cities, there’s no one of color they hang out with on camera.”

Abdul-Jabbar also addressed how wealth and status differ between the two cities.

“New York is the city of self-made hustlers who are driven to prove themselves in the crucible of merciless competition and high failure rates. L.A. is where people move once they’re rich and famous,” he wrote. “Although some married into wealth, many of the New York women are self-made. They earned the success before fame.”